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AfroPop: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange

Dear Mandela (#502)

Destroyed homes, threats at gunpoint and high-court action, this battle by three young people to stand up for their rights is a testimony to people power. When the South African government promises to "eradicate the slums" and begins to evict shack dwellers far outside the city, three friends who live in Durban's vast shantytowns refuse to be moved. Dear Mandela follows their journey from their shacks to the highest court in the land as they invoke Nelson Mandela's example and become leaders in a growing social movement. By turns inspiring, devastating and funny, the film offers a new perspective on the role that young people can play in political change and is a fascinating portrait of South Africa coming of age. [56 minutes]

Series Description: AFROPOP: THE ULTIMATE CULTURAL EXCHANGE, the innovative documentary series on contemporary life, art and pop culture in the African Diaspora. Four films introduce powerful stories: African boxers journey across the Atlantic to match their skills against the best in the world; a teenage girl travels to Ghana and an expatriate from Sierra Leone returns to his homeland, each hoping to dispel prevailing myths about the two countries; and, Hurricane Katrina victims find themselves refugees in their own country.

Haiti: One Day, One Story - Haitian-American filmmaker Michele Stephenson visits Haiti six weeks after one of the world's most devastating earthquakes to document the personal stories of the Haitian people.
The Other Side of the Water: The Journey of Haitan Ra Ra Band - On Sunday nights during the summer, thousands of people gather in Brooklyn's Prospect Park to watch a motley band of young musicians carrying traditional drums, bamboo tubes and four-foot-long pressed-tin horns. They play Ra Ra music - a mix of Carnival, vodou ceremony and grassroots protest - which originally served as a voice for the slaves in their revolt against the French and of those struggling against ongoing dictatorships in Haiti. This documentary focuses on Pe Yves, the leader of the Ra Ra movement in New York, who is caught in the middle of a struggle for the meaning of Haitian identity. [82 minutes]

125 Franco's Boulevard - For 40 years, Franco the Great used his talents to paint murals on the storefront roll-down gates on 125th Street in Harlem. Re-zoning legislation and a recently passed city law threaten to remove these gates, along with the art and culture painted on them. Who will step up and preserve Franco's art in the wake of big plans to change Harlem?
Nora - "Nora" is based on true stories of Nora Chipaumire, a dancer born in Zimbabwe in 1965. In the film, Nora returns to the landscape of her childhood and journeys through some vivid memories of her youth: family dramas, difficult love affairs and militant politics. Using performance and dance, she brings her history to life in a swiftly moving poem of sound and image. Shot entirely on location in Southern Africa. [56 minutes]

"Rise Up: Reggae Underground" follows some up and coming musical voices in Jamaica's music scene. Some will make it, but various reasons that reveal much about the economic struggles and class distinctions in Jamaica, others will not. [56 minutes]

The film journeys into the streets, back alleys, crowded dancehalls and countryside of Jamaica, the birthplace of reggae music. In a society with abundant talent but scarce opportunity, three distinct and courageous artists fight to rise up from obscurity and write themselves into the pages of history. [56 minutes]

The African ritual of female genital cutting prompts one young Malian mother to seek asylum in the United States to protect her two-year-old daughter from the pain and sometimes horrific health consequences of the practice. "Mrs. Goundo's Daughter" bridges the mother's two worlds - the largely Islamic West African village and her adopted home in Philadelphia. Throughout, the film gives equal time to activists fighting to end the practice and traditionalists trying to defend it. [56 minutes]

From the shifting faultlines of Hollywood fantasies and the economic and racial tensions of Reagan's America, Fishbone rose to become one of the most original bands of the last 25 years. With a blistering combination of punk and funk they demolished the walls of genre and challenged the racial stereotypes and political order of the music industry and the nation. Telling it like it is, the iconic Laurence Fishburne narrates EVERYDAY SUNSHINE, a story about music, history, fear, courage and funking on the one. At the heart of the film's story is lead singer Angelo Moore and bassist Norwood Fisher who show how they keep the band rolling out of pride, desperation and love for their art. [86 minutes]

Burning in the Sunfollows the journey of a young social entrepreneur on a quest to electrify the rural households in his native country of Mali. Looking to make his mark on the world, 26-year-old Daniel Dembele decides to return to his homeland in Mali and start a local business building solar panels, the first of its kind in the sun-drenched nation. The film traces Dembele's journey from growing the budding idea into a viable company to servicing his first customers in the tiny village of Banko. [56 minutes]

Documentarian Thomas Allen Harris journeys to Africa and Brazil on a quest to find his spiritual ancestors. Reared in both the Bronx and Tanzania, Harris documents his own struggles with cultural identity while investigating the broader issues of race in the United States, Africa and South America. [56 minutes]

Calypso Rose, the ambassador of Caribbean music, is a living legend, a charismatic character and the uncontested diva of calypso. Cameras follow Rose from Paris to her native Tobago, then to New York where she lives, and back to her ancestral homeland, Africa. Each place reveals another face and facet of the complex woman behind the public persona. [56 minutes]

AN AFRICAN ELECTION grants viewers unprecedented access to the anatomy of Ghana's 2008 presidential elections. Capturing the intrigue of electioneering, the intensity of the vote-counting process, and the mood of the countrymen whose fate lies precariously in the balance, director Jarreth Merz's coverage unfolds with all the tension of a political thriller, revealing the emotions, passions, and ethical decisions that both threaten-and maintain-the integrity of the democratic process. [86 minutes]

Eliaichi Kimaro is a mixed-race, first-generation American with a Tanzanian father and Korean mother. When her retired father moves back to Tanzania, Eliaichi begins a project that evocatively examines the intricate fabric of multiracial identity, and grapples with the complex ties that children have to the cultures of their parents. Kimaro decides to document her father's path back to his family and Chagga culture. In the process, she learns more deeply about the heritage that she took for granted as a child. Yet as she talks to more family members, especially her aunts, she uncovers a cycle of sexual violence that resonates with her work and life in the United States. When Kimaro speaks with her parents about the oppression that her aunts face, she faces a jarring disconnect between immigrant generations on questions of patriarchy and violence. [56 minutes]

Destroyed homes, threats at gunpoint and high-court action, this battle by three young people to stand up for their rights is a testimony to people power. When the South African government promises to "eradicate the slums" and begins to evict shack dwellers far outside the city, three friends who live in Durban's vast shantytowns refuse to be moved. Dear Mandela follows their journey from their shacks to the highest court in the land as they invoke Nelson Mandela's example and become leaders in a growing social movement. By turns inspiring, devastating and funny, the film offers a new perspective on the role that young people can play in political change and is a fascinating portrait of South Africa coming of age. [56 minutes]

In 2007, Ayala and Fallshaw were drawn to the cause of the Polisario Liberation Front, which represents the Sahrawi people, who have long struggled for control of the Western Sahara against the competing interests of Morocco and other factions. Once they started shooting, however, they gradually stumbled on a story about modern slavery that has become hugely controversial. The filmmakers focused on a black woman in her thirties named Fetim Sellami, who is reunited with her mother through a United Nations program. [56 minutes]

The one-hour documentary visits 180 city basketball courts throughout New York City's five boroughs to uncover the world of pick-up basketball. Playground legends, NBA athletes and everyday players tell the story and show off their athleticism (and trash-talking) on local basketball courts. [56 minutes]

Sixty-eight-year-old artist Das exemplifies the elegance and mathematical precision of kathak, a classical dance of North India. Jason, a 32-year- old African-American tap dancer, hails from the freestyle, street-wise American tradition of contemporary tap. The two join forces and an unlikely friendship develops that bridges continents, generations, cultures and communities. [56 minutes]

The 90-minute film puts international justice in the spotlight. In the aftermath of the Sierra Leone civil war and massacre, Issa Sesay awaits his trial in the UN International Special Court, located in the heart of Freetown. Prosecutors call Sesay a war criminal, while his defenders brand him a reluctant fighter. [86 minutes]

After the civil war in Sierra Leone, many visitors now stay away from the picturesque beach village of Lakka. Five villagers share their stories of life on the ocean, of living off the land, and of war, love and religion as they try to convince tourists to visit a nation still healing from a devastating war. [56 minutes]

The Curacao youth baseball team faces injuries and obstacles as they try to maintain their winning streak at the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Penn. Team manager Vernon Isabella and his players also learn the meaning of national pride while travelling from a humble ball field in the Caribbean to the international spotlight and back. [86 minutes]

The film follows a group of men, raised in the United States or Canada, and repatriated to Haiti for crimes ranging from violent assaults to driving violations and petty theft. Faced with a language and culture they do not understand, the men struggle to adapt to a new and unfamiliar country hostile to their presence. The deportee's families, meanwhile, grapple with anxiety, blame and regret. [56 minutes]

Told through the eyes of an increasingly empowered heroine, The Carrier is a powerful and moving portrait of an unconventional family, set against the backdrop of the growing HIV/AIDS epidemic in Zambia. This lyrical film follows Mutinta Mweemba, a 28-year-old subsistence farmer living in a polygamous marriage. After learning she is HIV positive and pregnant, Mutinta sets out to keep her unborn child virus-free and to break the cycle of transmission. [56 minutes]

In 2009, in Senegal, where "football is king," a women's football street tournament is organized for the first time by the association Ladies' Turn. Despite the passionate commitment of Seyni, the former captain of the women's national team, and of the women and men that fight at her side, the game is far from won. Defying taboos and prejudices, the girls play on the fields for a growing audience. Will they be allowed to go all the way and play the game they love? Through the suspense of the competition and the different characters' stories, the viewer discovers an African and Muslim society in flux. Beyond the desire to win the final, might the aim be for a more important victory? [56 minutes]

Since Europe closed its borders in 2006, thousands of Eritrean refugees have fled their military dictator-ruled country towards Israel. The only way out is across the Sinai desert in Egypt. There, many are kidnapped by Bedouin smugglers and taken to camps where they are tortured and raped as they are forced to call their relatives begging for ransom for their release. The multi-award winning film Sound of Torture follows Meron Estefanos, an Eritrean journalist-activist living in Sweden. On her popular online radio program she talks to hostages in the camps while recording their pleas for help as well as asking their family members to raise money for their release. The film follows Meron as she searches for Timinit, a girl of 20 who arrived at the Israeli border, but, from there was never seen again. It also captures two refugees who made it into Israel in their desperate attempt to save their loved ones' lives. [56 minutes]

Born into a homophobic society, what are you willing to sacrifice to survive? The Abominable Crime, at heart, is a story about a mother's love for her child and an activist's troubled love for his country. It gives voice to Jamaicans like Simone Edwards, who survives an anti-gay shooting, and Maurice Tomlinson, a leading activist who is forced to flee the country after being outed. Told as they unfold, these personal accounts take the audience on an emotional journey traversing four years and five countries. Their stories expose the roots of homophobia in Jamaican society, reveal the deep psychological and social impacts of discrimination on the lives of gays and lesbians and offer intimate first-person perspectives on the risks and challenges of seeking asylum abroad. [57 minutes]